Lufthansa Slows Capacity Growth
Jeff Edwards May 12, 2016
Reversing previous expansion plans, Lufthansa may ground some planes and reduce the number of seats available as fierce competition and terrorism fears have depressed demand.
Lufthansa’s parent company is dialing back an aggressive expansion strategy in favor of plans calling for more modest growth in the near term. Company officials say that prolific competition and slowing ticket demand following several high-profile terrorist attacks has led upper management to reconsider any move that would considerably ramp up capacity.
“There’s too much capacity in the market, and a better adjustment of capacity and demand will help us with our profitability,” Deutsche Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr told Bloomberg in an interview this week.
The CEO said that while low-fare subsidiary Eurowings will continue on a path towards expansion, Lufthansa will take a more tempered approach to capacity growth. Spohr says that much of the reduction in capacity would come from arranging maintenance schedules to make fewer seats available during the busy summer travel season. Company officials say that temporarily grounding some planes in Lufthansa’s fleet to reduce available seats is another option that is being considered.
Lufthansa has struggled to hire and train cabin crew members fast enough to meet the airline’s ambitious growth goals. According to Bloomberg, low unemployment in Germany and stiff competition to hire qualified candidates has hampered the airline’s goal of hiring nearly 3,000 new flight attendants this year. The German flag carrier has already reduced the number of crew members on some flights but expects that further reducing seat capacity will also help to lessen the crew shortage’s strain on day-to-day operations.
[Photo: Lufthansa]
Is that really what they get? Heavens, that's loads less than what you get as a rep in a German theater, and I complained bitterly all the time about how unrealistic it was when I was there. And that was in the Eastern part of Germany, where things were cheaper. These flight attendants will be living in Frankfurt, Munich and such places. What I find really sick are the stupid salaries these people at the top get (and even the German theaters weren't that bad).
Perhpas you should add, that Lufthansa offers new flight attendants a basic salary of € 1380 before taxes a month , which is approximately the minimum salary in Germany. For this they should speak English fluently and preferably another foreign language and waste most of their weekends and still be friendly and customer oriented. On the other hand Mr. Spohr has increased his own salary by 15 % last year from € 2.000.000 to € 2.300.000 with another steep rise already negotiated. Then they wonder that they can´t find anyone so stupid to fly at such conditions ? Please !!! If you pay peanuts you get monkey, if you pay hardly anything you attract not even these. Weak, incompetent management is the problem at Lufthansa, definitely not the staff which is among the best in the industry.